Marine drowns in Maple Hill quarry

Officials are reminding people to avoid swimming in abandoned quarries after the weekend drowning of a New River Air Station Marine.

Demorion Bryant, 20, was swimming Saturday with friends at what was Lanier's Quarry in Maple Hill when they realized they couldn't see him, Capt. Jamie Ezzell with the Pender County Sheriff's Department said.

"Apparently he had gone under the water and never came back up so they tried to dive for him and couldn't find him," Ezzell said of the Saturday evening incident.

The friends then called 911, and Pender Emergency Medical Services arrived with rescue divers.

"They were able to locate the victim. He was in about 20 feet of water about 15 feet from shore," Ezzell said.

Bryant was dead when divers found him.

Despite the quarry's abandonment, Ezzell said it's common to find people swimming there when it's hot since there is not a gate or sign stating that it is private property.

"They have to understand that these quarries are very dangerous. Of course there's no life guards and these quarry holes can be extremely deep a lot of them are deeper than the rivers and things around here. Some of these quarries, there are objects in there," he said, explaining that stolen cars have been pulled from Lanier's Quarry in the past. "There's no telling what is in these quarries that they're swimming in, they can be dangerous. But people, they do whatever they can."

Contact Amanda Hickey at 910-219-8461 or ahickey@freedomenc.com. Read the Lejeune Deployed blog at http://lejeunedeployed.freedomblogging.com.